Associate Program Officer

Job title : Associate Program Officer

• Reporting to the Country Programs Lead, the Associate Program Officer will be responsible for supporting implementation of country strategy through grant-making and stakeholder convening, relevant country government relations and policy development and relevant country business development and resource mobilization.
• S/He will support AGRA's engagement with national government and donors for the implementation of appropriate policies and interventions with the aim of creating an enabling environment for investment by smallholder farmers and agribusinesses.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Identifies, develops, and maintains strong relationships with grantees and other partners working to improve food and agricultural policies.
• Supports the team in identifying potential grantees, beneficiaries and stakeholder Clusters in key agricultural production areas.
• Identifies, supports, and guides efforts that enable smallholder farmers to sell their products and capture value from downstream activities.
• Leads efforts to facilitate economic transactions between value chain players and smallholder farmers in Africa
• Facilitate data and information pipeline to monitor programs across themes, contributing to dashboard development, program standardization, and quality control in collaboration with the country team.
• Ensures quarterly submission of reliable and accurate data from grantees on the AMIS platform.
• Promotes the agricultural transformation agenda with AGRA technical experts to develop appropriate partnerships.
• Collaborates across AGRA to identify and overcome policy-related constraints on technology development, dissemination, and uptake.
• Represents the country office at grantees fora and liaises with project focal staff for areas needing special attention by other program officers.
• Engages the Country Programs Lead and Program Officers to assess and advise on capacity needs and gaps in grantees' ability to implement projects.
• Networks with broad stakeholders: financial institutions, grantees, universities, other funders, international organizations, beneficiaries.
• Builds and maintains a wide network of stakeholders and contributors to the work.
• Negotiates to bring diverse collaborators together and advocates for their work.
• Identify potential grantees and work with them to develop impactful interventions.
• Oversees and supervises consortiums.
• Reviews grant portfolio to ensure grantees are implementing programs in accordance with the contractual agreement.
• Oversees the grantee actual implementation process and provides relevant backstopping as may be required.
• Devises ways to strengthen national capacities for policy design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
• Engages the Country Programs Lead and Program Officers to assess and advise on capacity needs and gaps in grantees' ability to implement projects.
• Implements the specified program activities in accordance with approved annual work plans jointly formulated with the beneficiaries.
• Creates regular periodic reports as may be required by the Country Director/Programs Lead.
• Assesses projects to help identify and resolve program issues, ensuring the programs stay on schedule and within budget.
• Work with cross-functional teams in making critical decisions during challenging situations.

Key Qualifications and Experience required:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, such as agriculture, agricultural economics, rural development, or business economics
• Experience in grant making and in leading policy-related development initiatives primarily in Africa
• Fluency in English required; ability to communicate in French will be considered an